'From now on, you are my motorcycle. Vroom vroom!' by Kara
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 11:31 AM

Something came up industry-wise that could save me from having to think up something pretentious to write about, but I'm gonna let Co-Writer handle that because, despite one of my other comics, I don't consider myself the best ranter on industry crappiness. I shall let him see to it if he so desires, because I don't.

So what is there, then?

Ah yes.

Arthuriana, yes? Since print stuff for all the comics is taking forever, I've got stuff to talk about and you're all going to listen to it.

So, thematic element of death.

No, no, I'm not being a downer, this is actually vaguely interesting, I swear.

Now, if you've ever in your life read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, you may know where I'm going with this. If not, I recommend reading the original Middle English or, if you're not versed in ME, Tolkien's translation. That one also includes Pearl and Sir Orfeo, the former of which is a bit long and slow-moving, I'm afraid. But a good read nonetheless if you're into ME poetry.

Anyway. Basically a knight challenges Gawain to a test of bravery. Gawain is to chop off the knight's head. ... okay. Well, he does it. Then the knight picks up his head, tucks it under his arm, informs Gawain that he will return the favour in a year's time, and strolls off. (Spoiler: Gawain doesn't get his head chopped off.)

Now, in Yvain (which is by my boy Chretien de Troyes), there's a scene with multiple freaking beheadings. Of a minor character. Basically Yvain is in love with this girl, and her sister isn't for it, so she sends her boyfriend (the sister, I mean) to kill Yvain. Yvain lops the boyfriend's head off a few times, but the sister has some ointment given to her by Morgan le Fay that cures beheading. Yeah, no, I know. After a while Yvain gets tired of this, beheads the guy, then chops his head into pieces and dumps them in the moat. The sister fishes them out and puts them back together, and at this point the boyfriend's like 'Fuck that noise, I'm done here.'

Those are my two examples. There are so so so many instances of this sort of thing ... curing beheading and other such things. And while Arthurian legends do tend to stretch that willing suspension of disbelief, you'd think this'd be a bit much even for them.

But there was that sort of mentality in the Middle Ages, and I'm not sure you even need to tie it in to religion. I think it was just ingrained. That was their way of vicariously cheating death. They loved the idea that, at least in stories, people could just 'get around it.' And I mean, think of when this was taking place and how much dying was actually going on. It's understandable; they needed that fantasy very much.

I spend a lot of time, at least in my own head, comparing the yuusha genre to Arthurian legends, and I think it's true of really any mecha-related anime. You're not getting people recovering from bifurcation or anything ... erm, not much (let's just leave cyborg Guy out of this, he's completely out in the medieval end of this thing). But you're getting people near death. People who are essentially dead. And you know, mecha that are essentially dead. I will not be giving examples because people need to watch these shows on their own.

You know, I've yet to discover just how the tie between Arthurian legend and the yuusha genre came about. Sometimes it seems accidental, other times not. I mean, there are a lot of themes that don't show up anywhere else, much less together. (I will be saving these for another time.) Makes me feel we're rather clever, that. We've seen Gwen nearly cheat death a few times. Not quite as much as the Green Knight, but she would not be recovering from a lot of that stuff without alien technology, am I right?

The medievals' willing suspension of disbelief really isn't that far off, then. Mebbe. I could be wrong.

If you have been, gross!